Karmageddon
by Kuro49
Summary: Herc/Raleigh/Mako. Sequel to Armageddon. The fact is this: It is always going to come full circle back to him.


Also needs to be tagged for past Herc/Chuck, Herc/Stacker, Herc/Chuck/Stacker, Yancy/Raleigh, and one-sided Mako/Stacker. When I first told myself that I was going to write a Raleigh/Herc/Mako, I really didn't intend for it to turn out this way. Also, those pairings that I've mentioned at the start? They are tagged for _reasons_.

Sequel to _Armageddon_.

XXX

**Karmageddon**

XXX

"I've still got work to do."

He tells Raleigh when the boy (and aren't they all just _kids_ standing next to an old man like him) is physically dragging him towards the mess hall. There is ink on his hands and paper cuts on his fingertips. His eyes are tired and his body doesn't register hunger like it used to.

"Yeah, Marshal, you do." Raleigh quirks his head back and gives him a smile, one that looks all wrong, one that disappears as soon as he turns back around to find a free table. "But sitting down for one meal won't stop the Shatterdome from falling apart."

"…That's reassuring." Herc murmurs under his breath, and it feels like the world is lodged in his throat when he looks beyond Raleigh's shoulders to where Striker's crew used to sit. He doesn't quite hide the pained expression that must have shown because Raleigh looks like he might want to hit himself.

So he sits down instead.

He doesn't see Mako staring at Raleigh with disbelief when she joins them with two trays. But he doesn't see a lot of things these days when the only thing he knows is to keep pushing himself forward, one step at a time.

"…You're not eating?" Herc asks when she pushes one of the trays to him, and Raleigh pulls the other one in front of himself. She shakes her head and tells him, "I already ate."

Mako takes a seat next to Raleigh, and watches him from beneath her dark lashes across the short distance of the table. She has Stacker's smile even though she is not his by blood.

Herc looks away.

.

The fact is this: He is the only adult left in the room.

He is also the only one who no longer knows how to look after himself.

And that is the thing, what mattered then no longer matters now. Now that the world has ended, now that he has outlived a war he never imagined to end. Hercules Hansen hasn't had a reason to live for a long while now, not since Pitfall, not since he's got Stacker's hands wrapped around his old bones like he's all he's wanted, not since he's got Chuck's hands curved around his old man like he's all he's needed.

Twelve years is a long time for a war.

.

The Shatterdome is an empty home they call their own.

And when he finds Herc sitting at the edge of his bunk with his head in his hands, well, Raleigh could have acted a little bit more surprised. (But he figures it wouldn't matter, grief is everyone's poison and they've all lost enough these days to last another lifetime on this dosage alone.)

"I don't think Chuck would appreciate that I'm the one to take care of his dog, Herc."

Herc glances up at the opened door, reacting more to the light streaming into his quarters than the way Becket says his name. Herc looks at Raleigh and the kid tries to hand over the leash, head cocking to the side as if to prompt him to do this, just once.

Like it matters.

Raleigh speaks of Chuck like the kid may as well be walking through the door the next moment to throw a punch. And Herc doesn't know what his intentions are, just knows that his jaw aches when he opens his mouth, like Chuck's fist have already made contact, like the bruises have already settled beneath the skin.

"Brat doesn't get to complain." Herc lets out with a bite but his voice empties out into a bone deep grief, and hasn't he buried enough empty coffins to not have this one as his last?

He takes Raleigh's extended hand and allows the kid to yank him on his feet. The ground doesn't shake but the rueful smile Raleigh gives him does. When he finally tangles his fingers with his, leash and fingers and broken, jagged smiles that waits and waits, Herc doesn't think it's even possible to pull away.

"But I do, don't I?" Raleigh asks when he leads him out of the room.

And Herc thinks it might just matter what his answer is when he looks to Max.

.

The fact is this: Mako Mori has loved Hercules Hansen for a long time now.

Not this way though, well, not at first. She doesn't think it's entirely sensei, but she doesn't think it's entirely not either. Instead, she thinks it may have been both their tragedies that finally draw her to him.

He loses a son, she loses a father. He loses his love, she loses hers.

And the mirror image they make when he doesn't apologize for her loss, the ocean stilling into rippling waves. They look to the empty Jaeger bays and the machines that will never make it back to where all Jaeger die, and she gives him the same courtesy too.

In another year, they will be in San Francisco, standing at the edge of Oblivion Bay to commemorate the dead. And she will take his hand in hers in front of the public eye.

For now though, she will work up the courage for when she finally takes his hand in hers in private so she can brush her lips across his fingertips, over paper cuts and ink stains. Over the decade of war worn into the skin, she loves him like she loves sensei for all those years, loves him because he is the last resemblance of what sensei loved for just as long.

Mako Mori loves Hercules Hansen just as Stacker Pentecost did.

.

"Is this," Mako asks, like she does every step of the way, like he can ever say no to the way warm hands are reaching out for him in the dark, "okay?"

"What would you have me do?"

She takes his hand and brings it to her lips, lay down kisses like they are brands, start of new scars to match the ones that are never going to rub out against his skin. And for one, selfish, sentimental second, he imagines he can have this and be happy.

(Happy like he was when he still had his son and a best friend that kept the bed warm on both sides. But he is only coming to the realization now, that you had to be happy once to be so sad now.)

"Stacker would kill me." Herc tells her, a murmur when she laces their fingers together like he knows how to let go. Her silhouette in the dim light reminds him of a man, a man that is nothing at all like her but really is him in all her essentiality just _more_.

Even as she lies back against the bed, pulls him along, her back is strung like a bow ready to hit the centre ring. And when she looks at him, he sometimes has trouble remembering that Stacker isn't dead at all.

"Sensei would understand." She smiles with her sad, dark eyes, and when the smile finally curves over her lips, it is still a damn special thing.

.

The fact is this: Raleigh Becket never found it in himself to fall in love (again).

He has a history of scars just as extensive as Herc's own. So when Mako tells him, a whisper deep inside his head that she loves him, _loves him like sensei did_, Raleigh knows that his physicality alone will remind the man of Chuck Hansen even if nothing else does.

And that's the thing, Raleigh doesn't know if he is willing to hurt someone like he used to hurt himself. (Not that he still doesn't look for Yancy in the shadows of every man he brings back to bed. Not that all of them haven't been longing for the dead in everyone else.)

Raleigh just imagines that there is a better way, that when he fits himself behind Herc, wraps an arm around the man, neither one of them will break apart from the muscle memories alone.

.

"Chuck would still kill me, wouldn't he?"

Raleigh touches a hand against his sides, and there's nothing experimental when he feels Hercules breathe out a breath that shudders through his ribs and skin. Splaying against the bruises in shapes of fingers that may or may not even have been Mako or him.

Hell, it may very well be Herc himself as he pushes his own fingerprints into the places where Chuck and Stacker have once lay claim.

Herc turns his head to look at Raleigh, Raleigh who has his hair fanning across the pillowcase and says, "yeah, he would."

Their eyes are much too dry, and their smiles are much too thin.

The bed's warm and the wet towel she gets them is hot.

"You okay?" She asks, and her voice is soft, like they are all only an inch away from suffocating in the thick, thick grief.

"No, not yet."

Mako licks her lips, intertwines her fingers with Raleigh's over the curve of Herc's worn old bones.

"Not by a long shot."

He says to them.

And they can only tell him that it sounds about right.

.

The fact is this: Hercules Hansen is just one man.

This isn't supposed to be his war but he has been living for the end of the world for so long. Losing it all, he understands that it is always going to come full circle back to him.

He is never supposed to outlive this war, but here he is.

His collarbone still aches some nights where he manages to dream of both Chuck and Stacker beneath his skin. He may be asleep between Mako and Raleigh but Jaeger pilots are a lost breed in this day and time, they are hard to shake off even if he tried.

And he hasn't tried for a long time now.

They lay down flowers over their empty graves and hope that it'll be enough for another night.

XXX Kuro


End file.
